A seemingly normal Friday night was unfolding in Boston to start the weekend. Hordes of people bustled out of work and toward their evening plans. Cabs barked at one another. Lines began to form at many of the nightclubs in the Theatre District.

But the biggest party on this crisp October night wasn’t happening inside.

You could find that on Boston Common, where club and techno music blared from a backpack strapped to a young man with a British accent. Hundreds of runners, clad in neon lights and Reebok gear, moved their bodies to the music and eventually turned the Boston streets into a nightclub in motion.

The Midnight Runners, a popular run crew from the United Kingdom that’s been growing internationally, arrived in Boston to try to replicate its success in the States. They welcomed Boston runners the best way they know how: a 10K run with a bootcamp workout baked in, all to spark a groundswell on American soil.

Greg Drach, cofounder of Midnight Runners, looked at the 300 or so people gathered in front of him before the run started with a huge smile. He felt right at home.

“We never thought we would be hosting an event in Boston. To me, this was crazy,” Drach, 28, said to Runner’s World. “The response we got, I got shivers. Everybody was so fired up. From the beginning on it was going to be an epic, epic, night.”

Drach and cofounder Christian Dorffer, 46, met in January of 2015 simply to discuss some business propositions. Forming a running crew was the furthest thing from their minds. Both had a background in technology, but they found that they bonded most and collaborated best over their love of running and adventure.

The two decided to run with each another in the middle of the night. They said they weren’t morning people and thought it was unique to run at midnight when nobody was out. Those late-night runs turned into ideas. Those ideas turned into Midnight Runners.

Midnight Runners then morphed into a large run crew that has roots in London and Berlin. Several times a week, runners will join for late-night runs and celebrate with libations after. The party always follows the running, although, judging by the 10K that happened in Boston, it was tough to tell which is which.

“We were doing it for ourselves,” Dorffer said. “We were doing it to have fun, and we didn’t actually care how many people came as long as we were having fun. That’s kind of the magic.”

While Midnight Runners was gaining notoriety overseas—one of its biggest popups was in Barcelona, where thousands of people came to join the group in March 2016—Reebok as a brand was figuring out how to get back into the running scene. The Massachusetts-based company had been a fixture in every major sport in the 1990s and early 2000s, but moved away from that format and into other popular fitness realms, like CrossFit.

But recently, Reebok has made a comeback to the running world. As the company tested product, it needed to find ambassadors to push the brand. When some at Reebok first started hearing about Midnight Runners about 15 months ago, it didn’t take long to seek them out.

“For us it was a natural fit,” said Scott Daley, general manager of Running at Reebok. “This was something that reflected our attitude and our DNA. It’s where we want to go.”

Runners perform some bodyweight squats during their outing with the Midnight Runners on October 27.

Daniel Varga

Runners who showed up to the Boston launch were outfitted from head to toe in Reebok gear, getting a free pair of Floatrides for participating. The start of the run began in the Boston Common, where loud music bellowed and onlookers gathered to see why hundreds of people were dancing and warming up with bodyweight exercises at 8 p.m. (Unlike the early days of the group when it had a smaller following, rarely do Midnight Runners actually start up at 12 a.m.)

Drach sent the runners on their way through the darkness after a brief warmup. About a mile into the 10K run, all the runners stopped at a designated location, dropped down into a plank, and took over an entire sidewalk.

Several other stop-and-go moments happened on the run to add strength-training exercises. Drach said the goal is to make the group as inclusive as possible, forcing the faster runners to do more exercises if they get too far ahead. This lets slower runners catch up before moving on as a group to the next location.

Hundreds of runners in Boston join the Midnight Runners along the Charles River.

Daniel Varga

“That puts a huge emphasis on running as a community,” he said.

Several London members joined Drach and Dorffer on the voyage to Boston. That group helped coach the Boston crew experiencing Midnight Runners for the first time.

“It was fun to run at night and feel safe doing that,” said Boston resident Rachel Dziedzic, 27. “I thought it had really good vibe and energy. It was really cool being in a big group because we weren’t really sure what to expect.”

Drach and Dorffer’s goal, along with Reebok, is to host runs along the Charles River every Tuesday night beginning November 7. There are no plans to charge in Boston until the group is off the ground, and the hope is to grow in major cities like New York and San Francisco in the near future. (Midnight Runners charges a yearly fee in London, which equals to about $130, to maintain itself.)

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